Paper Red
by A Vague Shape In The Dark
Summary: Snippets of Audrey. Originally published in the Rare Women Fanfiction Exchange on AO3.


~o~

** _Your flames are flames that kiss me dead ~ Robert Smith_ **

~o~

Something inside Audrey ached to get out.

The unnameable attacked with the same potency as a heated needle burrowing slowly through living marrow, demanding release. Finally the force, in meeting with her heart, sent her body in flight. Running impulsively down stairs, past her inebriated mother, Audrey paused only to secure a sweater round her shoulders.

As she lingered by the door through a haze Audrey's mother saw her, and, raising her right hand from the armrest of the sofa, Sylvia pointed to the milky skin of her daughter's throat for an extension of time; her thin fingers trembling slightly as it became increasingly difficult for her arm to remain hovering in its place. Silence and unwavering time passed until finally, Sylvia, voice distorted by the effects of alcohol and face contorted into an almost comical sneer, spoke; "you were never wanted."

Audrey waited for what was to follow, if anything, while clumsily her fingers fastened the buttons of her sweater. She was shaken, not so much by Sylvia's words - her mother wasn't exactly relaying a revolution - but by her urgent desire to be released from the stifling hotel.

"Your father and I didn't want another child," Sylvia choked. "Ben already had an heir. A boy was all he wanted. You were unplanned, just something that came along. Something that I wish had never happened."

Audrey studied her mother then, straightening her back, she replied, "I am glad that I 'happened' regardless if no one else is. One day you and Daddy will see..."

Opening the door she was swallowed by the enveloping night. Running once away from the escaping warmth of the hotel, then slowly she meandered the wet grasses along the edge of darkness, making her way to the falls. When finally beside the water she threw herself against flattened stones, her stomach touching their coolness, fingers tracing their lines. Her thoughts went to Laura Palmer as she felt the thin mist from the falls hit her face, as if the dampened wind carried with it her secret tears.

Audrey became flooded with a memory from many years before, of her father and Laura alone together in his office. Laura had been sitting on his knee, her golden hair silhouetted by the flames of the fireplace behind them, Ben's smiling face resting on her shoulder as he whispered in her ear. Seeing them as such, through the opening of the secret passage, had sent a sickening wave through Audrey. The embrace of her father had been impure, she'd known as soon as her eyes had fallen on him.

Laura was a child. She'd had to have been thirteen or fourteen at the time, and Audrey wondered if her father had been 'in love' with her then as well. Had he always been, even when Laura was too young to remember the visits made to the Great Northern with her father?

Whenever suspicions would arise regarding her father's strange relationship with her classmate she would cover them with imaginary sand, smoothing over with her hand the disturbed. But, despite all her efforts, the submerged still glistened no matter how deeply she buried their rotten make.

The meaning behind Ben's actions, his extraordinary gifts to Laura, his unnerving preoccupation with his lawyer's daughter, stood as clear as stones along a riverbank. Each pebble signifying a sin, a want. And once added, they covered all else.

In all ways was he tainted.

Audrey felt sobs welling in her chest. Her father wasn't worth her tears, Laura, however, was. She missed her, God help her. Thinking about what happened to Laura made her heart ache. She knew her spite towards Laura was fueled by jealously. Pure and simple. Laura had always had everything she didn't, and all those who knew Laura Palmer loved her. It was unavoidable, even she'd fallen for her in a way. Laura didn't deserve death, as she'd hardly been given life.

Audrey vowed to live fully the years given her, feeling as though they were stolen from another.

* * *

When she was little she would walk the halls feigning disorientation. Swearing that she, despite help, simply couldn't find her way out of the winding arteries of the hotel; that she was incapable of deciphering from her fragmented memory the reason behind her appearance within the building.

Summoning her skills as an actress she'd weep, dragging her stocking feet over polished wood, lamenting as she'd seen the women in motion pictures do when they'd lost the love of their lives.

Sometimes she was Bette Davis, sometimes Vivian Leigh, Lana Turner, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Greta Garbo... the sky was really the limits. They all gave her strength.

Raiding her mother's closet for coats, scarves, handbags and heavy sunglasses, Audrey would try her best to emulate the look of a hung-over housewife, an escaped convict, a spy. Encountering strangers in the hall she looked as though through them, muttering to herself, petting the top of her handbag as if a small dog, before continuing to the lobby. Once she had the attention of a crowd she would recite lines, as best she could remember, from last night's film; staring to the distance.

_"Did you ever wake up in the dark - feeling all alone? Oh, I mean, terribly alone. No one - no one else on earth, just the... the dark all around you and that... that awful scary emptiness? Don't you know me? Don't you know me, Jim? I'm not Margaret. I didn't kill Frank. I'm Edie, Jim."_

There was never any Jim other than the sofas, the end tables, and into their shadowy dives she was transfixed.

After her performance she would walk in silence to the dining room, as if nothing were wrong, amused with her ability to easily bewilder people. Sitting at a table she'd order a glass of coke, still in-character, before hastening to remove dolls, coloring books and crayons from her bulky handbag. And so would she spend her evenings, lost in visions. The faces of cartoon characters usually unrecognizable once she was finished marring them with thick colored wax.

When Audrey's father discovered her playacting he berated her for her behavior, her 'insanity' as he'd put it. She'd sit with crossed legs and arms as he lectured her, looking beyond the walls, never hearing a word as the music she so loved played in her head. She felt herself reaching out to it, giving herself over. It was the only way the infrequent meetings with her father were tolerable. When he would tell her to go to her room she, in her mind, transformed into Lola-Lola from _The Blue Angel,_ and so did she sway to her hidden cabaret. There the audience was beautiful, the orchestra was beautiful, but most importantly her life was beautiful.

* * *

Audrey placed arched flesh framed in red across the flat surface of a cement parking curb; wind wreaking havoc with her hair. A cigarette was dying in the darkened corner where she'd thrown its half body, and, trembling to and fro in the wind, the thin clouds of its final breaths escaped its charred, papery throat. Directing her eyes toward the sound of tires dusting over pavement, Audrey saw a car enter the lot of the Double-R Diner. It was a Cadillac with Donna Hayward behind the wheel.

As the curled waves of the Hayward girl's hair appeared over the roof of her car Audrey tilted her head and rolled her shoulders, as if to shake something from her soul. Donna proceeded onwards, smiling meekly as she saw Audrey against the backdrop whites and yellows of the diner. Ms. Horne rocked on her heels, eyes momentarily on the lumber truck rolling by, on the awning overhead, then again to Donna, as slowly she blinked her heavy lids.

Donna crossed her arms, her blue sweater creasing at the elbows, and, with her right leg farther than her left, came to stand on the vacant pavement before Audrey, considering her seemingly with scorn. "So let me guess, you're just wiling away the hours after a long day's work with your FBI agent because you are this close," Donna pinched her thumb and forefinger together, "to locking away Laura's killer. In fact, the whole case is as good as solved all thanks to your due diligence."

"Ha-Ha," Audrey deadpanned, "very funny. For your information, _I have_ discovered a few things about Laura. Not much, but more than what I knew yesterday."

"I think we can all say we know more than what we did yesterday," retorted Donna.

"Hey, why don't you try. See just how easy it is to find out what Laura was up to."

"I have been! What do you think, I sit on my hands all day waiting for the clouds to rain information down on me?!"

Audrey shoved her mitts in her coat pockets. "No... All I was thinking is that I wish Laura had left more clues. I mean, if she knew something might happen and didn't want to tell us, why didn't she leave more for us to find? Didn't she want us to know who was responsible for her death?"

"Sometimes I think she left things but we just can't see them."

Audrey thought it over. "... I wish I knew what Laura told Johnny, if anything. They were really close."

"Didn't you guys ever talk?"

"Not really." Audrey began scuffing her shoe over the cement. "Well, nothing that added up."

"Laura's words were such a mess," Donna sighed. "James has told me some of what she said to him and it scares me."

Audrey thought of the few things she'd heard Laura say in passing, before bowing her head forlornly to yellow lines of the parking spaces. Donna could tell from the other girl's demeanor that she cared for Laura, despite what she wanted the world to think. It heartened her so that she felt a brief wave of exaltation spread over her, and mood changing, stepped closer, bringing up a subject she knew would lighten Audrey's mood as well. "So how's Agent Cooper?"

As Audrey laughed, looking upwards, Donna could see tears had formed in her eyes. "You know about as much as I do."

"Oh come on..." Donna teased, lightly shoving Audrey's upper arm.

"Well," Audrey started, "we sometimes talk over breakfast."

Donna raised a brow. "Really?"

"Yeah, not only does he like his coffee black as midnight on a moonless night, but he also loves the taste sensation of maple syrup and ham colliding, and his bacon burnt to a crisp, almost cremated. Oh, and jelly donuts are his favorite."

Donna couldn't think of a comment other than that the FBI Agent's obsession with food was almost ridiculous. "So, were you going or coming out when I pulled in?"

"Neither."

"Well... you want to join me inside for a soda or some coffee?"

Audrey paused as she looked to her now dead cigarette. "Sure."

* * *

After the ride home with her father and Agent Cooper, Audrey wanted to be alone; to lie down, though she'd just waken. Nothing her parents could say was of any importance; she didn't want to deal with them. She didn't want to deal with anything. Closing the door she removed her shoes before lowering herself to the comforting stillness of her bed.

Raw were the crooks of her arms, senses drifting. Her consciousness in the surrounding air. She existed in and out of induced dreams. At One-Eyed Jacks her visions had been gray and clouded, filtered in transparency, steeped in cold, strange darkness. A type born of the unknown; of fear. She'd felt hands wrapped around her own, a body falling with hers through impassable distances, and had heard Dale's voice breaking through the barriers. The hands around her were his. He'd calmed her, kept her from a worse fate. She'd merged with him in that state, his was her soul. She from that moment on living eternally in his.

Audrey, with the spirit of Dale, traversed the dark lake beds and tangle weeds not knowing how to escape. Without feeling.

Through ink infused trails Laura Palmer had appeared out of reach, falling in a void sealed by glass. Forever through smoke, fingers between her lips, a tint of playfulness in her eyes. Tall arches spread from her back, blue effervescent rods, as wings. Laura's voice echoed in Audrey's mind as she saw her burst into a ball of flame, flying endlessly through time and space.

_She was happy. She was free._

After an eternity she awoke to find Agent Cooper beside her bed, his eyes full of concern, his hand burning into her cheek. Audrey knew of no other in the room save him, though the voices of many cast their weight.

She didn't want to leave. Never wanted to.

Ben Horne hovered over her side, violating the place she seconds ago had held dear. Calmness left her and was replaced by the drenched memories of her father forcing open the curtains surrounding her bed, a porcelain mask over her face.

She hated him.

Audrey damned her father for joining her on the drive home, she wanted more of what she had left. The feeling that now she would associate with that bed, that room in the Bookhouse she would never see again.

She had so much to tell Agent Cooper.

In the perfume of her sheets she grew tired, still reeling from the drugs of One-Eyed Jacks. Audrey pictured Cooper and ran her bare foot over the cool comforter where she wanted him, wishing she could feel his arms around her.

She'd find a way to tell him everything.

A noise outside her door broke Audrey from her thoughts. Turning she saw no one and her heart sank, knowing her mother didn't care enough to even open the door and peek through. Sylvia was away regardless of when she was near. Closing her eyes again to find sleep, Audrey was shocked by a sudden embrace, and cries she knew as Johnny's soon muffled her ear.

"I missed you too."

* * *

She would rather live alone than be with a man she didn't love simply for the sake of being in a relationship.

She saw faces when she went out, but none that sent a bolt through her heart as she had in other ways received before.

Not until she felt the same level of certainty would she pursue a man, or preferably, have him pursue her.

* * *

"Laura, Laura." Bobby's voice was little more than a sigh as he dragged his heavy boots down the hall. Passing Audrey, she noticed his eyes were glazed and a grin was plastered on his face.

"You're lost, Bobby Briggs."

"If I am then I don't want to be found," he said, turning to face her, walking backwards before disappearing around a corner. The few students loitering the halls were dancing.

Pushing open a door in the wall Audrey saw the ever-present combination colors of Twin Peaks High School covering the ladies' restroom. There were a few girls inside cluttered around the sinks, styling their hair and reapplying make-up. Audrey noticed Donna Hayward was amid this sea.

Removing a quarter from her pocket Audrey ignored searching eyes as she approached the feminine product dispenser, and in her attempt to hurry into seclusion, she almost ran into Laura Palmer leaving a stall. Rubbing her nose Laura stated the obvious, that the stall was vacant.

Smirking, Audrey entered, and as soon as the door was locked she heard Donna and Laura's soft laughter meeting with the mirror before them.

"So," Donna started, "did you go with your goon to the movies last night?"

"No... But I can assure you I had him seeing stars." Eerie, seemingly insincere laughter escaped Laura, then stopped abruptly as she whispered, "Let me borrow your lipstick, Donna."

Audrey crept between frame and door, leaving, and as she did so Laura saw her dark hair in the reflection of glass. Saying nothing, Laura's eyes followed Audrey's movement as she placed crimson to her lower lip.

"Bobby Briggs is singing your name," Audrey ventured. _"Laura, Laura."_

"Is he? I don't hear it."

"You wouldn't."

"I hear another song."

"Mixed with his?"

"Yeah. Mixed in. Like fog through the trees."

"One day you'll want to hear only the trees but they won't be there, and the fog will move on."

"The trees will always be there. As will the fog. But there is also a black dog and he is always hungry." Laura, who was finished with the lipstick, opened Donna's hand and placed the tube at the base of her fingers, folding them over once secure. Looking to her palm, Donna couldn't say anything.

"Boy, you two sure know how to have fun," Audrey said, taking a cigarette and lighter from her skirt pocket.

"You don't know the half of it."

"Don't I?"

"Doesn't everyone?"

"Maybe..."

"You'll hear it whispered if you lift a shell to your ear. It passes over the tides."

"Like jelly-roll, like sculpture."

Laura leaned forward, her face near Audrey's shoulder as she stared into the mirror. Audrey felt strangely compelled to speak. "When you're not here you're here... because you're in their every breath."

"Whose?"

"I don't know," Audrey realized.

"The entire town," Donna said from her place near the wall.

* * *

Sometimes when she was lonely she'd creep into her secret passage and settle with the shadows along the wall, thinking about what her life would be like in the future, what life was like now for the people she knew. She'd envision the undoubted pastels of her classmates' living rooms and the picturesque small comforts children often ignore.

Donna Hayward and her sisters took for granted the affection of their parents. They thought nothing when asked about their day, or when given a compliment. They didn't know what it was like to grow up being told you are constantly in the wrong. That you are a failure in all things.

She just wanted her father to love her.

Thinking about it, she knew it was all his fault. She'd never done anything other than be herself. He didn't try to know her, to love her, because he didn't care.

She loved getting back at him.

* * *

Hearing a certain song made her see herself being married in the woods. Surrounded by bare trees she would glimpse a dress of white and a darkness beside her, a face obscured. Always in this vision the wind whistled through the woods, over the mountains, over a wedding at the cusp of night.

* * *

"Shelly, what do you want to do?"

"Huh?" Shelly looked to Audrey, plates stacked high in her hands.

"With your life. What do you want to do?"

"Everything that I can't because I don't have money," she answered. "What about you, _Ms. Horne?"_

"I want to use up every minute I have, drain them down to the last drop so that I'm exhausted at the end of the day."

"Well, if you want exhaustion, maybe I could try to get Norma to give you a job here. I know I'm dead on my feet every night."

"Are you sure that's not just from jump starting the old man?" Heidi giggled in passing, tired of Shelly and her boyfriend, Bobby, saying the same to her.

_"And,"_ Norma started, her hand raised to the side of her mouth confidingly as she nodded to Shelly, "you know this girl might have another to add to the mix?"

"No kidding."

"Pretty soon she'll be so worn out from all that jump starting she won't even be able to drag herself out of bed."

"Guys!" Shelly protested, one arm in the crook of her elbow, the other pulling at her face.

"This new one is Agent Cooper's boss or something," Heidi said, leaning over the counter. "His name is Gordon Cole. You should hear what he says about his 'goddess'. " She ended by rolling her eyes. As she giggled her teeth gleamed in the light overhead.

"I'm surprised Audrey didn't hear, as loud as he speaks," Shelly replied. "Really, we shouldn't even mention him. He's just being nice."

"Uh-huh," said Norma "Listen, Shelly, for your sake, I hope he doesn't 'tip' all other waitresses with a kiss."

"If so I think I'd rather have the money." Heidi laughed.

Audrey raised her brows, happy to be involved in the conversation, but not really knowing what to add. She observed Shelly, who looked uncomfortable as Heidi and Norma went on to talk amongst themselves. "Shelly, one thing I know about men is that they are never 'just being nice'. Do you like this Cole guy?"

"I don't know..."

"You do. I can tell, even if it's just a little bit."

"Yeah, well, I'm married. What difference does it make?"

Audrey wafted a hand dismissively. "Just hold on to whatever hope you have and don't let go. Who knows what might happen."

Shelly started to speak, Audrey, however, pressed on: "But first you need to find yourself."

* * *

Donna placed the tip of her right index finger through a small circle, spinning the plastic dial until every number was entered. An answering machine picked up.

"Audrey, this is Donna. You know why I'm calling... because of the way things went the other day. Maybe we could try to start over. I suppose I should phrase that differently because we never really had a chance to begin, did we? At least not the way they should have." Donna sounded flummoxed as she searched for words. "What I'm trying to say is that I'm tired of the way things are and I think you are too."

Audrey stood by the phone, the evening sun catching on her shoulders through the window, her hand in the air above the receiver, wondering if she should answer.

By the time she decided Donna had already ended the call by asking her to get in touch. "_That's fine,"_ Audrey thought._ "I'll phone her late one night when she doesn't want me to, like a true sister."_

* * *

John Wheeler never came back.

He'd promised his return, after having her body, and Audrey waited just long enough to know that all of his whispers seeped in ardor had been untrue.  
The letters he'd sent, the seals of which she had in a nauseating delirium kissed while recovering in her sickbed, were now at the bottom of White Tail Falls in shreds; their ink bled from their skin. As she wished his lies to be from his tongue.

In time Audrey realized that she was much happier without John or any of his so-called Justice, and wrote him off as a learning experience. One of many necessary for advancement in life. At times she enjoyed picturing his disembodied head as a stepping stone beneath her feet, morbidly bobbing in water after progression. Eyes half-lidded as flesh rolled to face a clouded silver sky.

After surviving the bank explosion and leaving a coma she'd hoped things would change, but when they didn't she left town. Her life became an eclipse of grays and yellows; the blur of the highway, for what felt like forever.

In the world she found herself. Found strength, through anger, through hope, and so ceased requiring the emotions of others to survive.

She didn't know what she was doing, but was fortunate as everything seemed to fall about her as the tides and into place.

Eventually she settled in order to attend college, using Horne money that was rightfully hers, along with what she made on her own. She discovered while rooted, that not only in Twin Peaks was she considered strange. This made her happy; made currents her cells.

Years passed. Audrey became a successful FBI agent, working resiliently until finally she became a high ranking agent, one that Gordon Cole relied on when dealing with Blue Rose cases.

Becoming involved with the unexplained was of the utmost importance to her.

Before leaving Twin Peaks Audrey had briefly seen Agent Cooper. In the darkness of night he'd approached; his eyes as soulless as his laugh. She'd run, never wanting to see that version of him ever again. She deciphered that the apparition she'd seen did not exist in the vessel of the man she loved. This being had always consisted solely of sorrow and pain. An evil double. A man from another place.

Sheriff Truman, Deputy Brennan and Hawk recounted for Audrey the events leading up to Cooper's reemergence from Glastonberry Grove, sparing no details, including all they knew of the Black and White Lodges. Audrey had realized from that point on what she must do, that she would be the one to save him. But at the time she was not ready. In a room shared by many a voice belonging to no one told her that leaving Twin Peaks would be a means to go beyond fear. She listened, not knowing the voice was the log's.

Audrey had spent the years wisely; in facing herself, studying, gaining courage and love. In learning how to set fear at bay. All that she needed to enter The Black Lodge and leave with her soul intact.

When the time was right she returned to Twin Peaks. She knew from Dale's experience that no one would be able to help her, so she went alone and unannounced to Glastonberry Grove. As she met the curtained entrance to The Lodge she made herself feel nothing.

Searching for hours, for days, sometimes with Laura, with Maddy, with a woman she didn't know whose dress was stained with blood, she eventually found Dale Cooper. She saw him from behind, his legs giving out, his body sinking. A small man in a red suit ran palms over the other, making water the floor.

Audrey took Dale's hand and faced evil with her love, dragging her Special Agent from a dream. Without pausing they made their way through the maze of chevron and blood until suddenly they found themselves under a starry sky in the middle of the forest, surrounded by 12 bare trees.

To Audrey's amazement there had been no fight.

Love had been enough.

Dale fell to the ground, coughing; his free hand to his blood-stained shirt. He was not himself, nearly mad from his years in The Lodge, but she would not let go his hand. Ushering Dale to the car she drove to the Pine View Motel, away from her family, and stayed with him through hours that were not real.

Audrey alerted Dale's friends of his escape. They visited, offering comfort, but could discern from his withdrawal that Dale was Audrey's alone. Her care was what was anchoring him to Earth, what was preventing him from fading. They would in time know him again as he was, but for now they understood they should not expect their friend to so quickly emerge from the shadows.

Sheriff Truman informed Audrey that BOB was no longer tethered to a body. The night before, around the time of Dale's escape, his Doppelganger had seemingly committed suicide while imprisoned. His body had disappeared as they went to inspect it, a filmy haze exiting his crown as an aura as they entered the cell. Hawk believed BOB had in that way returned to The Black Lodge, concluding that the Dugpa could now be anywhere, or anyone.

Audrey knew that the force residing in the woods had existed for hundreds of years. If no other before them had found a way to banish it's evil how would they? The most they could do was keep it at bay. Use what knowledge they had gained from previous victims to instruct others of ways in which to fight if sought as a host. But that could only go so far until death occurred, whether it be self sacrifice or no.

She didn't inform Dale, there was no sense.

In a corner of the floor she would find him crying as she came back from an errand, from another room. Lying beside him she would run her hand over his hair before embracing him.

She was willing to wait forever.

Dale told her what he'd seen in black and white. In sheets he would whisper of nightmares. He spoke often of his mother, his brother, Caroline, a girl named Marie. How in time he'd seen all those whom he'd lost, even if they were only mirages of blood.

He was distant, forlorn. His words sometimes muffled as he sank deeper into a pillow. Audrey listened, her face unreadable. As always, something unspoken lingered above them as thick as hovering smoke.

His love of Tibet was leaving his lips when one night he wandered, staring into her blue eyes. She'd smiled, loving him as he was uncharacteristically silent, and that was when he put his hand on the hollow of her neck, gently, warmly.

When he kissed her it was his death; he was reborn.

* * *

_ "I tried to talk to you before. Why wouldn't you answer?"_

_ "You spoke in death. I couldn't understand you. I heard only a lilting voice, backwards, drifting as an echo when I woke. I-I remember it only now."_

_ "Not even when you woke up?"_

_ "I forgot."_

_ "I'm learning. I talk to others when they let me in. You're never hard, Audrey."_

_ Laura, her hair shorter, looked through Audrey then smiled. "My Dad and Maddy are here, so are some of my friends... I'm never lonely. Don't worry about what can't be explained. It's not meant to be... Donna will know what I mean in saying the angels helped me."_

_"Donna?"_

_ "I talk to her at night sometimes when she doesn't think about listening. It doesn't really matter what I say. She hears my feelings. She knows that I will never stop loving her."_

Audrey didn't remember Laura's message until the day was almost over. When she did she captured what Laura had said and passed it to Donna on a scrap of paper.

Donna didn't tell her what it meant.

* * *

Audrey drew her knees closer to her chin. The sun was in radiant swatches of light brightening her face and upper body as she sat under a tree watching her child chase her frantic, mewling husband through autumnal grasses.

Audrey had, hours earlier, solved another Blue Rose case and felt relaxation was owed her wary bones. Praise had been lavished on her by her superiors and fellow agents, as well as her husband, but she felt the happiest with the resolve her own contentment supplied. With a swelling of pride, Audrey knew that none of the other agents assigned the case had seen the evidence given them in the same light as that which was fixed behind her eyes, nor had they been able to put together the pieces of the puzzle in so clever a mannerism as she.

Sometimes at the end of the day Audrey would come home and scarcely believe the events of but a few hours earlier had taken place, or that she'd lived to crawl into the safety of her own bed when the deepest of shadows struck. Dale knew her life, and was perfectly understanding when occasionally her moods would shift to a darkened hue.

He'd usually prescribe meditation, solitude and would at her feet burn incense.

When cast from a room, or made to know otherwise that he was not wanted, Dale would wordlessly depart to the land of their child and contentedly play as a peer rather than a father until the storm passed, and Audrey loved him for it.

She loved him so much.

She drew strength from her core, she always had, but her love for Dale helped fuel what burned within. When she was young, when she'd first approached his breakfast table instantly knowing he was what she wanted - even though she had hardly known herself - she did not think her love for him could deepen, but it had.

Palms itching, she looked to the man who called the cells of her being. Dale was laying on the ground, letting their little boy force twigs in the soft earth under his spread arms.

Dale looked perfectly content, staring to the sky from his bed of grass. His eyes shifted once to meet Audrey's. He raised his hand, giving her his tried and true thumbs-up, only to quickly place his arm again to his side as their child fussed over his sudden movement.

The boy explained that his father's outline was being made so that while he was on duty, or in other ways departed, a part of him would always be nearby if anyone wanted to ask an unanswerable question. He would trace his mother next. Though, he said, he thought she would always answer questions, regardless.

Audrey removed her hands from her knees and raised, bending as she came to her son, kissing his forehead. Walking to distant corners of their yard she plucked fallen twigs from where they nestled close to the coveting earth. Returning with a handful, she on her heels rested, snapping twigs until they were less in size than her fingers, and with them gently she began tracing the shape of Dale's unattended left arm. Dale happily sighed and looked as though he might soon sleep.

"Do you like my ring?" She asked at length, quickly holding out her hand for Dale to examine.

"I always have," he said, kissing the tiny crystal; causing their son to once more exclaim, "and I always will."

Audrey suddenly felt something in her eye, and rubbing a bent finger over a lid, causing gold and blue specks to cover her husband's face with their dust, she freed whatever had become trapped. Seeing still the moving fragments she began to ponder the reality of what was before her. Perhaps the specks that were momentarily blocking her vision were in fact her past trying to break through. If so, she wished she could latch onto a spot and consequently open a crevice into which she could lower a fraction of this moment.

She'd achieved what no one expected. She no longer wanted because she already had everything she'd ever desired. She was an achieved, intelligent woman; respected, adored, content. A mother who gave to her all to her child and husband, and received their all in return.

She was whole.

Dale seemed to know her thoughts. "Audrey Cooper, you are a flame that will never extinguish."


End file.
